Keep in mind - this is a bootleg - and should not be mistaken or misconstrued as an authorized official release.

We'll start back with a [post from David Baerwald on September 9th, 2000] after this collection made its first appearance here on the dbis.

I was going to say that those recordings were made at a particularly tempestuous time of my life, but that's starting to seem like a redundancy...

Steve Berlin and Matt Wallace were co-producing, the poor bastards. We recorded it at an unnamed studio owned by Leon Haywood in Compton, which was actually a pretty cool studio, technically and otherwise, nice API console, etc... with the exception being the very real sense of fear that was in the air . There was the aforementioned bank robbery/multiple homicide next door, for one thing. Also Leon always had his shotgun handy, and made sure we had an escort if we went across the street to get donuts and barbecue. Very slow-moving cars would drive by, and pissed off-looking guys in gang colors giving us the I See You Dead stare, etc...

An A&R guy came down and was wandering around the studio and Leon didn't recognize him and brought him back at gunpoint to the control room. "Do you know this guy?" "Yeah, you know him goddamit, that's blank!" "Well tell him not to be pokin around" We named the studio Leon's Music and Firearms, and sometimes Abdullah's Mosque of Music. We drank a lot of shitty coffee.

I remember playing a lot of guitar and bass. I remember screaming into the mike a lot. I remember being really frustrated by my incompetence. I remember a Texas blues version of Aids and Armageddon with a wonderful guitarist named Rich Stekol, and a great five-string violinist named Gene Elders. And that's when I met Greg Leisz for the first time. I remember Leon's piano, which was beautiful and in a nice sounding room, and that's also when I played my first B3 organ. And this powerhouse drummer who I actually went on the road with and can't for the life of me remember his name. Big glowering blond guy, I remember. The working title , and one I still think applies was "Black Hours". How in the hell did you find it? I havent heard it since after we did it.

fast forward to December of 2019

How in the hell did I find it? Not sure. My email links tell me Peter T. from the DBIS sent it to me. He presently has no recollections of it. A message board poster named Dayle Hemsley from Australia posted in 1998 about receiving an "early demo cassette" from Rondor Music (A&M) in 1991. He mentioned it including Unspoken and AIDS & Armageddon. David also mentioned A&A being recorded during this time as well. This collection omits that version (wasn't on my cassette), but does contain an album's worth of presumably demo recordings - which would later become Bedtime Stories. My copy of the demo collection was digitized and put online in 2000 - titled at the time Stories Before Bedtime. Jeff Wells, the official illustrator of all things DBIS volunteered his artistic talents to create cover art. You might still have the tracks in your MP3 collection. Listening to it recently, I've discovered it sounded pretty awful and didn't fully capture the music as found on the cassette. So with some new equipment (JVC KD-V6 -> Schiit Jil) I revisited that cassette.

Now nearly 20 years later - sounding better than ever - I can now offer these tracks titled as intended - Black Hours. Jeff Wells graciously offered his talents once again to create a new wonderful look for these tracks.

Black Hours by David Baerwald.

Enjoy the tunes.